Secret Mission Baldessarini 2012 Eau de Toilette

I admit: the elegant black bottle with blue stripes is indeed a sight to behold. It suggests a high-quality fragrance with slight hints of freshness, if not even aquatic notes. The deception works, because in reality, Secret Mission is more of a sweet, synthetic jumble, whose cheap-looking individual components are not so easy to analyze.

Perhaps at the very beginning, one can still discern a citrus theme, but this quickly transforms into a spiciness with many partly sweet as well as slightly bitter nuances. The only thing I could somewhat pinpoint would be a hint of cardamom.

Excellently hidden - and this is not meant as a compliment in this case - is the promised oud. I also do not assume that real oud was used here, but even the little bit of synthetic oud completely gets lost. However, I can well imagine that perfume salespeople would still praise this to the highest degree - but the olfactory perception is close to zero. One could also speak of refusal to work...

Furthermore, I am surprised that this secret mission lasts only relatively briefly. Consequently, the sillage is quite close to the body, so one hardly stands out.

Secret Mission is certainly not a bad fragrance, but I am annoyed by the discrepancy between
the fragrance promise and its fulfillment, as well as the outer and inner values. If this was the mission of Mäurer & Wirtz to deceive their customers - even regarding the ingredient information - then they are on a dangerous path. It is nice that some commentators before me were able to uncover this as well - and indeed as a completely official mission!